The Women Advancing Through Technology (WATT) Program funded by NSF INCLUDES, created an opportunity for women living in low income housing complexes in Orange County, CA to participate in Computer Science/web page design training.  Led by the University of California Irvine, in partnership with Jamboree Housing Corporation, Orange County STEM Initiative, Orange County Dept. of Education, Dreams for Schools, Gargani + Co. and Cielo, the project included an 8 week course for women, delivered at the housing properties where the women lived. The WATT training   covered topics such as: developing web design elements using templates; creating pages with WYSIWYG and Mobi Rise; HTML Mark up: Syntax, Essential & Common Tags; CSS; Java Script; Cascading, Color & Typography; overlays, buttons, page layout; Java Script sliders, loops, object, events & functions.  Job readiness workshops conducted by Cielo to deliver self-efficacy/career training based on Social Cognitive Career Theory was also made available each week to the women. Initially, recruitment meetings were held at three different Jamboree Housing sites, resulting in forty-nine women signing up for the course. Ultimately, thirty-nine women completed the course (attending 80% or more of the weekly classes, 4 to 5 hours per week.) The courses were held at the three housing complexes with meals, and childcare provided to eliminate barriers for anyone who wanted to attend. Upon graduating for the course, Jamboree Housing provided each completer with a new laptop to keep. Twenty-two women participated in the exit survey which is what our outcome data is based upon for this study. Our conclusions are drawn from knowing that WATT is innovative and ambitious. It serves a group of women largely absent from the technology workforce. The WATT participants were one-hundred percent socio-economically disadvantaged and predominately women of color. Their education levels ranged from no high school to some high school, and/or no college to some college.  Our estimated impacts are encouraging. They suggest that WATT increased women?s confidence, perceived ability in STEM and interest level in college and career activity. However WATT also decreased some outcome expectations and interest regarding STEM careers, which we believe may have been due to the perceived nature that computer science is difficult and requires higher education only. The majority of the women were interested in learning about computers at a basic level which included the web design using prepared templates, and other technical skills such as how to use Word, Adobe, Excel and the Microsoft Office Suite.  The career training component also helped women build the practices that they would need to eventually find work such as writing an effective resume and understanding work-related responsibilities.  Our study sample was small, but our impact estimates based on pre-post differences were significant in measure. Five suggestions for further study of the WATT program include: 1) recruit job seekers into the WATT program, if women are not seeking employment, WATT could be perceived as too challenging and requiring too much commitment over the long-term. 2) Include more bilingual instructors and instructional aides to accommodate English Learners in the program. 3) Determine the optimal length of the training, using A-B testing protocol. 4) Find a more scalable and longer time setting for future study in order to develop a deeper levels of outcome evidence. 5) Acknowledge the challenge that WATT addresses and use an iterative design cycle over time to find the optimal program that meets the needs of the participants.

Last Modified: 03/12/2019
Modified by: Linda Christopher